Anvil: The Story of Anvil

2008 heavy metal documentary

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Lips and Robb Reiner (note the extra "b") have rocked as the founding members of heavy metal almost-wases Anvil since they met at fourteen. Now well into their fifties, they haven't given up the dream of becoming
rock 'n' roll gods. This documentary follows them on a disastrous European tour and the recording of their thirteenth album as they try to fulfill their dreams.

"Out in the schoolyard--
Little peaches play,
Rubbin' their beaves,
Got a lot to say."

At first, you just think you're watching some This Is Spinal Tap knock-off. Then, you realize it's not a mockumentary at all, that Anvil are real hosers who have been reaching for rock 'n' roll stars for about forty years. There are comic moments, including more than a few that recall Spinal Tap, but it's the very human moments that makes this one so special. You really grow to like Lips and Reiner, connect with their struggles, and root for them to taste at least a little bit of success. And I'll tell you without any shame, that I teared up quite a bit during one scene. It's likely going to be my favorite movie moment of the year, in fact. Sonically, Anvil's music isn't really my bag, but I was really impressed with Robb's drumming abilities. His stick work made it impossible for me not to hold up the devil horns. And I'll tell you what--I'd consider myself an artistic success if I had fans like Mad Dog and the guy who drank beer through his nose. A roller coaster of a documentary that juggles humorous moments, really sad scenes, and ultimately touching and beautiful footage this well should be seen by anybody regardless of how much they like bands that play their Flying-V's with a dildo.

Sir Kent recommended this little gem to me.

One Day in September

1999 narrative documentary

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Eight Palestinian terrorists, angry that they had put in so many hours training for a bobsled competition that didn't even exist because it was the summer games, kidnap some Israeli athletes and trainers and demand that an impromptu bobsled competition happen immediately. The media and German security helps them out but can't get the bobsledding set up in time to make them happy. Things end badly.

This is a suspenseful narrative documentary in the same vein as Man on Wire. Michael Douglas narrates, but he's used sparingly. I think he's almost completely unnecessary because when this story really connects, it's utilizing the actual images from the tragedy, the news reports, and the interviews with the family members of the victims and one of the terrorists. That last one there--one of the terrorists, a guy hiding somewhere in Africa--gives this documentary a little more force. Without that guy's perspective, the story would have been incomplete. It doesn't exactly make you sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, but it does make the story more well-rounded. The news footage succeeds in supporting the idea that the media is filled with fools who often get in the way and do more harm than good. It's best demonstrated in the scene where the poorly-trained German security men dressed in 70s athlete garb are positioning themselves for a sneak attack-and-rescue mission, a mission that is thwarted because the terrorists are watching it all unfold on television. It's tragically comical. I really liked how this makes the story personal, especially with the interviews with the wife of one of the victims. It also makes it perfectly clear that the terrorists weren't the only bad guys in this story. They were the baddest bad guys maybe, but the ineptitude of the Germans in handling a crisis like this and the lack of sympathy displayed by the Olympic organizers (the decision to continue the games while all of this was happening) puts them in the bad guy camp as well. This succeeds because it manages to create all this suspense even though you know how it all ends. And despite already being given the knowledge that none of these people are going to survive, you still are forced to root for them, optimistic about their chances. I did get really annoyed during a montage of horrifying images set to some rock 'n' roll at the end. Completely unnecessary.

The Source

1999 documentary

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A history of the Beat from when Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs met at Columbia University in the mid-40s, through their rise to pop culture icon status, to their deaths.

This works fine as an introduction to the Beats and their literature, but in covering fifty years in about ninety minutes, it's a huge shallow pool of a documentary rather than anything a fan of the writers can really sink their teeth into. I know that recordings exist of Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs reading pieces of On the Road, Howl, and Naked Lunch respectively, but the makers of this documentary wanted that star power and grabbed Depp, Turturro, and Hopper to do the readings. Not sure how I feel about that, but I have to admit it was pretty cool to see a couple of them really get into the reading. I don't want to mention which two for fear that the other one will stumble upon my blog and have his feelings hurt. Good seeing a really mean and bitter Gregory Corso (my personal favorite Beat poet), Herbert Huncke, the Fugs' Ed Sanders, Ken Kesey, Gary Snyder, Michael McClure, Philip Whalen, Laurence Ferlinghetti, Timothy Leary, and Amiri Baraka. It was especially cool seeing a lot of footage of Beat muse Neil Cassady. Along with the insight from the authors, this is stuffed with a lot of pop culture snippets, an attempt to show the Beats' influence on movies, television, and music as well as art and literature. There was a Lord Buckley spotting (just on a poster), a clip of Groucho, a Tom Waits song, and a little bit of Bob. If nothing else, this movie did make me say, "Hmm. It's been a while since I've read On the Road; maybe I should pull that out," and then later, "I'm going to dig out my Ginsberg discs to hear him read Howl," and then, "Where is my copy of Naked Lunch anyway?"

Vernon, Florida

1981 documentary

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Errol Morris visits the eccentric inhabitants of the titular rural community. They wax poetic about turkey hunting, worms, the human brains, gophers/turtles, God, crime, and sand.

I popped this delicious slice of life in because it was at the tail end of a list of somebody's favorite movies. I'd seen and loved everything else on the list, and I've enjoyed all the other Errol Morris documentaries I've seen. This one is just under and hour, but it's an hour jam-packed with comedy gold. Like a folklorist, Morris just turns the camera on these folks and lets 'em have the floor. There's no polish, no explanation, no real organization that I could see, just interwoven snippets of these (almost all) men sharing their odd obsessions with the camera. Interestingly, Morris actually was drawn to Vernon because in the late 50s/early 60s, two-thirds of self-amputation accident insurance claims came from there. The documentary doesn't address amputation at all though. You get a wild turkey hunter sharing stories of his greatest triumphs; an old man who seems to be an expert on the brain ("You ever see a man's brains? I've seen them. I've picked them up, scooped them out, put them in, do them up like brains."); a "wiggler" farmer who at one point is just showing off when he says the words "regular wiggler;" the Steve Irwin of Vernon who shows the camera a turtle and says, "Now this here is a gopher" and later claims that he could get 1,200 or 1,500 dollars for a possum in an auction; a cop whose biggest concern might be people stealing clothes pins; a guy with a jewel; and a woman with a jar full of "growing sand." Yeah, sand that grows. In a couple years, that sand will fill the jar. The style and pace and pointless subject matter will try the patience of some of my readers (looking at you here, Barry), but I thought it was fascinating and very very funny. The most bewildering moment for me: a guy tells a story about a 65-year-old mule with a hole in his throat. I had trouble understanding the guy, but I think he was describing pulling the mule out of the river and finding that a whole bunch of fish were swimming around the inside of it. Or something. Other things to look out for: At the 32 minute mark, a guy picks his nose with his thumb. And at the 36 minute mark, you get to see Michael Cera singing in the back row of a choir. I don't know exactly what Errol Morris's real intentions were, but if it had something to do with filling Shane with joy, it's a success.

Waste Land

2010 documentary

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Popular Brazilian artist Vik Muniz befriends catadores who rummage through Jardim Gramacho, the world's largest landfill and collaborates with them to use some of the recycled materials they save to make works of art.

The emotional impact of this caught me off guard, probably because I wasn't initially sure that I liked Vik Muniz's art or understood his motivations. The shots of the landfill and the catadores doing their jobs are pretty bleak, but you soon realize that this isn't about the location or a job that could easily be featured on one of those "Most Terrible Jobs Ever" television programs. At least it's not entirely about that. No, this is more about the individuals who work there, and the way this documentary (and Muniz) treats them as individuals is what makes this special. I enjoyed meeting these people, hearing about their pasts and problems and hopes and dreams, and most importantly, seeing the expressions on their faces that showed how much Muniz's work meant to them. More than any other documentary about art, you get to appreciate the impact that artwork can have on people, and that's a truly beautiful thing. This is a documentary that made me feel good.

My brother recommended this one.

Deliver Us from Evil

2006 documentary

Rating: 13/20

Plot: Apparently, Catholic priests have been molesting children and the church has been covering it up for years. Who knew? Director Amy Berg finds herself a pedophile willing to speak on camera about his experiences with being shifted from parish to parish following molestation accusations.

She finds him and takes him to a park to interview him. A park just crawling with sexy little children. It's difficult for me to figure out why exactly. I guess she was more concerned with getting a nice shot of Father O'Grady leering at a little boy than just letting his words speak for themselves. Getting it all directly from the pedophile's mouth is really the only novel part about Deliver Us from Evil. This is all old news, right? This is just Amy Berg jumping at the chance to shock and awe with a documentary subject, finding herself a bad bad priest and a composer who isn't afraid to pour it on pretty thick and then pretty much letting the documentary make itself. Because there's not exactly anything new here. There's nothing about this that will help anybody heal or help solve the problem. It's shooting priests in a barrel, and although finding parents willing to cry their eyes out on camera makes for some pretty good documentary footage, it's all pretty pointless in the end. And speaking of parents, you get just as upset at the parents in the stories of these molested children as you do the criminal priests and the higher-ups who help cover it all up. Father O'Grady, by the way, seems mentally ill. I'm not real sure why he agreed to appear on camera anyway, but there seems to be something wrong with the guy's mind. Other than the insatiable urge to touch children, I mean. There's just something missing, and you can see it in his eyes. Don't get me wrong--the information in this documentary is important. I just really didn't like the film's style, organization, or length. It felt like a television expose that was twice the length, one that wasn't exactly organized in a way that enhanced the experience. It's like a color-by-numbers documentary that didn't quite know when to quit. I guess I can be happy after watching this that my mother quit being a Catholic before I was born and that I'm smart enough not to put my children in situations that are dangerous to them. Other than that, I'm not sure why I needed to watch this.

Marwencol

2010 outsider artist documentary

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Mark Hogancamp was severely beaten outside a bar by a few thugs. He wakes from his coma brain-damaged and traumatized and instead of dealing with a complicated real world that he can't control, creates a World War II town called Marwencol with soldier action figures and Barbie dolls that he can. Elaborate stories of romance and adventure develop in Marwencol, and Hogancamp photographs it all. Eventually, his "art" is discovered, and Hogancamp gets to show off his world at a New York City art show.

If you enjoy outsider art or stories about outsider artists like me, Marwencol's definitely a movie you should check out. It's the lone film of director Jeff Malmberg (although I do see film editing for fine works of art like The Hottie and the Nottie is on his resume) and he does a fine job giving us Mark's story objectively. The more Hogancamp's character develops in Marwencol, the stranger he gets, but Malmberg passes no judgement and it's obvious that his subject trusts him and considers him a friend. And I think that's what makes this so good. Hogancamp lets Malmberg into his little world, and we get an intimate look at both the little world and at its creator. Details about the latter (how he walks his army figure's Jeep every day; his love interests; some odd little surprises near the end) are interesting, but this movie's got another layer when the plots and subplots in Marwencol are shared. A lot of those reflect how Hogancamp sees his reality and how he deals with the trauma and the loneliness he feels after the attack, but they're also cool little fictions, the sorts of stories that Tarantino could probably tell really well. A third layer deals with Hogancamp's introduction to the world as an artist, something I'm not sure he's entirely comfortable with or really even cares about. It raises those questions about the purity and purposes of art. There's no denying that he stills of his characters interacting in Marwencol are pretty awesome though. I'm really really glad that Hogancamp shared this world with Malmberg and that Malmberg shared it with us in this great little documentary, a fascinating glimpse at a troubled mind and the very positive way that those troubles are dealt with.

Hogancamp's pictures:

Sherman's March: A Meditation on the Possibility of Romantic Love in the South during an Era of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation

1986 self-indulgent documentary

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A guy's given some funds to make a historical documentary about General William Tecumseh Sherman's March to the Sea that devastated the South during the Civil War. He gets sidetracked and ends up making a documentary about his failed attempts to find love. Tracing Sherman's path, Ross McElwee meets various women, falls for them, and then watches his chances at a lasting relationship with them fall to pieces. Meanwhile, nightmares about nuclear war keep him up at night.

Full disclosure: I had to give this a bonus point once I found out the title was much longer than Sherman's March. At 2 1/2 hours, this is a little too long, and I'm not really sure who the audience would be for this sort of thing. People like me, I guess. It's got a Woody Allen vibe (or maybe a Michael-Moore-without-a-Point vibe), philosophically self-conscious, and folks annoyed by Woody's filmed dissertations on romantic love would likely be just as annoyed with this but for a lot longer. And it's essentially a guy making his own reality show in a time that predates reality television. But I like how McElwee's inner conflicts revolving around art as well as love become universal, and the freeform approach is as revealing as it is humorous. The film tackles a trio of discursive topics--love, nuclear bombs, Sherman--but they somehow come together as a cohesive whole. It's also a series of nice portraits of random people from America's South, almost working as an ethnological study on the side. You've got militia men, a woman who thinks slavery should be allowed for blacks who want to be slaves, and island-dwelling hippie chicks. The episodic, meandering structure makes this a very watchable, entertaining 150 or so minutes, and chances are, if you don't mind the guy, you'll probably enjoy this movie just fine.

Yellow Brick Road

2005 documentary

Rating: 15/20 (Jen: 15/20)

Plot: A New York program called ANCHOR (Answering the Needs of Citizens with Handicaps through Organized Recreation [Note: Shouldn't the acronym be ATNOCWHTOR then?]) brings together a collective of actors with a variety of disabilities to put on a stage production of The Wizard of Oz. The documentary captures everybody at work as they prepare for opening night and gives a glimpse of a few of the actors' lives outside the theater.

My favorite being the guy who was showing off his stuffed characters from Disney's The Great Mouse Detective. I was touched by this documentary and its subjects. My only gripes? I wish the performers would have done their own singing. The film opens with the mostly-wheelchair-bound Tin Man singing "If I Only Had a Heart," and I really liked his voice, and not just because he reminded me of a certain singer at Johnson Bible College. And I really wish we could have seen more of the actual production and really wonder why we didn't. Even though that makes it all a bit anticlimactic, this is still stuffed like a scarecrow with great moments--the hysterical reaction when one gal gets a part, watching the guy who played the Cowardly Lion show off his acting chops, the Tin Man's curtain call, the mayor of Munchkin Land trying to get his one line memorized. Yellow Brick Road is ultimately a look at some individuals who, despite not fitting most people's ideas about what actors look like or sound like, are given a chance to do something they love doing, and it's an absolute pleasure spending some time with them.

Movie Club Pick for March: The Rock-afire Explosion

2008 documentary

Rating: 14/20 (Jen: 15/20)

Plot: A look at the history of the Showbiz Pizza Place animatronic animal house band, The Rock-afire Explosion. The 'Splosion's fame was short-lived, but Creative Engineering, Inc. founder and band creator Aaron Fechter noticed a strong Internet fanbase early in the 21st Century. This documentary explores Rock-afire merchandise collectors, some who've even purchased their own Rock-afire Explosion in order to never have to completely grow up.

It's probably fitting that Michael Jackson footage found his way into this thing. Like the King of Pop, there are some people in this documentary who just can't or won't grow up. Jen seemed more startled about it all than I did. Me, I was filled with nostalgia while watching this thing. I loved Showbiz Pizza Place growing up (not that I ever dreamed of owning the Rock-afire Explosion like the guy in the documentary), and I'm sure those special trips to the restaurant contributed to my love of puppets and talking animals today. After all, it was the place where a "kid can be a kid," no matter how crappy the pizza tasted. So it was fun for me seeing the old commercials, footage of the band itself, a guy blowing in a Nintendo game to get it working. A scene in this also caused me to flash back to a turning point in my life. There's a scene near the end of this thing where you can hear the mechanisms, the clanking sound that the band members' parts make when they move around. I remember as a slightly older kid sitting up close to the Rock-afire Explosion and hearing that same sound and thinking, "My God! These guys aren't real at all! It's time for me to grow up." Soon after, I told my friend that it sounded like Mitzi Mozzarella needed some grease and that I was man enough to handle the task. I think that was the end of that friendship actually. My favorite scene in this was when they're taking Mitzi apart. It's like a Mitzi striptease, and like all my favorite stripteases, it goes all the way below the skin, right to the parts you've got to oil. Hot! I liked seeing the behind-the-scenes stuff in the Creative Engineering, Inc. factory. I was amazed at how quickly it all came together since animatronics, according to Fechter, is "everything in the universe put together." But he was making gasoline-conserving automobiles and leaf-eaters in 1973 with no interest in singing animals and then by 1978 had this band together. I really thought Fechter, a college graduate at 19, was a semi-impressive guy. Jen was less impressed, but I thought the guy was a genius. I wondered just what this guy could have accomplished if his brain wasn't as messy as the empty factory he still owns. He seems like the type of guy who should be saving the planet. And that sort of brings us to the central question this documentary explores--is the creation of an animatronic pizza joint band enough of a legacy? It doesn't seem to me that Fechter would say it was. He had bigger dreams left unfulfilled. The fans of the band, however, would surely tell you otherwise. There's a weird contrast set up by all this. You've got Chris Thrash (seriously, is that a real name?) who's had his dream realized just by owning his own Rock-afire Explosion and poor Fechter who, in the interview segments and that sad tour of Creative Engineering, seemed to have trouble deciding whether he was perfectly content or completely dejected. I could have done without the Cannibal Run-esque outtakes at the end or the whole thing about Thrash finding his Mrs. Thrash, she of the giant chest band-aid, and marrying her at skating rink or Fechter apparently hooking up with Rock-afire groupie who realized that Fatz Geronimo would never be interested in nailing her and figured Fechter was the next best thing.

Mitzi, if you're reading this, call me.

Waiting for "Superman"

2010 propaganda film

Rating: 9/20 (Jen: 7/20)

Plot: A scathing, one-sided attack on public education. Documentarian Davis Guggenheim half-asses his way through detailing the problems with public education and how charter schools can magically fix everything.

Please keep in mind one thing as you read this: An incredibly "bad teacher" wrote it.

Two days ago (one day after I watched this movie), we brought a guy named Jasper Partygarden (Note: That is not his real name.) into our team meeting. Jasper shows up to school late most days if he bothers showing up at all and has problems staying focused in class. In a lot of ways, he's a mature kid. He's street wise, has a car that was wrecked when he let a fellow 8th grader (a girl he liked) take it for a spin, and is a good-looking, older-looking dude who could almost pass as a young college student if you threw him on a university campus. At the same time, he acts really immaturely. He grabs things off people's desks, falls asleep in class, and teases other students in ways you'd expect more from an elementary school student. He eventually revealed to us that he's getting jumped almost daily by "Mexicans" in his predominately Latino neighborhood. He also told us that he doesn't get to bed until around 2:00 a lot of nights because his mother is sick, his step-father isn't around much, and he's got to help take care of the seven other children in his apartment, three who are under the age of two. We teachers realized that a lot of Jasper's problems, and the reason for a lot of his immature behavior, is because he's got to be the man at home. There's no room for Jasper to be a child so he acts out at school.

I'm not bringing up Jasper to make excuses for public schools, but there are a lot of Jaspers in the middle school I work, Jaspers with a variety of problems, a lot of them that you probably wouldn't even guess existed. Waiting for "Superman" frequently mentions the "best teachers" at the "best schools," contrasting them with "bad teachers" at "failing schools," and I just wonder how these "best teachers" would handle a classroom of Jaspers. Where Davis Guggenheim and his researchers are dangerously misguided is that they think the problem with the Jaspers of the world and why they aren't getting a quality education can be blamed solely on the public education system. In reality, it's a much larger and scarier problem than education. Jasper is the result of bad parenting in a broken country filled with arrogant and complacent leaders and citizens.

Thing is, you don't even have to pay much attention to catch the solution to all the problems Davis Guggenheim points out--most kids need to be taken away from their parents. For whatever reason, that's not the conclusion that Guggenheim comes up with. Instead, he's got an agenda, and Waiting for "Superman," likely from its conception, was his attempt to find anything that helps support that agenda.

And I'd like to think that anybody with a little common sense would be able to see the holes in this thing, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Guggenheim's documentary is sloppy myth-making and a textbook example of propaganda. You've got the same tired data that's been passed around for years and never questioned or actually broken down (reading scores flatlining, standardized test scores, Finland has better schools statistically, blah blah blah). You've got the use of buzz words ("academic sinkholes," "drop-out facilities," etc.), cutesy animated sequences, and red herrings that manipulate and distract. You've got faulty cause and effect like when our narrator tells us that an achievement drop-off from the fifth to the seventh grade can ONLY mean one of two things--kids get stupid or there's something wrong with public education. And you've got the stories (climaxing in a seemingly endless scene where they're hoping to be randomly drawn to go to the charter schools) of some kids who really want to learn and who, perhaps coincidentally, also seem to have really supportive parents. This documentary suggests that charter schools are the answer while completely ignoring statistics that show they are just as unsuccessful as public schools. No, it's not difficult to find some charter schools that have an astounding amount of success, but that's just not the norm. One could just as easily find public schools that have an astounding amount of success; however, that doesn't fit in with Guggenheim's plan. I also love how this compares and contrasts American schools with the rest of the world without really comparing or contrasting. Finland's at the top of the pyramid. Wouldn't it have been interesting to know why? Most Americans, I would hope, understand that a lot of those schools ahead of America are there because they don't allow all of their students to even get an education if they aren't succeeding early in their education. But no, Guggenheim just wants us to know that if we replaced our lower six percent with average students, we could be right up there with Finland. Whatever that means. Another statistic that I didn't really understand, likely because I went to public schools--"Bad teachers" only teach about 50% of the curriculum while "good teachers" can teach 150% of the curriculum. What does that even mean? Nevermind. Don't even tell me.

You know, this is so horribly misguided and misses the point (or worse, it invents its own point and hits a bull's eye) that I've decided that An Inconvenient Truth is also probably a bad documentary. I'm going to adjust my rating and stop inviting Al Gore to my parties.

Brother's Keeper

1992 documentary

Rating: 16/20

Plot: The Brothers Ward have lived in the same dinky and rickety shack in the middle of Middle-of-Nowhere, New York. They've got the minds of four-year-olds but work hard. The other occupants of Middle-of-Nowhere, New York, don't pay much attention to them until Delbert is accused of murdering his brother for reasons ranging from euthanasia to, more bizarrely, sexual frustration. The townfolk rally around the brothers after he apparently confesses to the murder, an act that Delbert's feeble mind may not have fully understood.

Watching the Ward Brothers is a lot like watching the Beales in Grey Gardens, an oft-uncomfortable invasion of privacy that, at times, you almost feel bad watching. The brothers are simple minded, yes, but in a way, it's hard not to admire the simple lives they lead. It's just hard to believe that people like this exist in our fast-moving 21st Century culture, and that's even prior to the revelations that their dirty little shack might contain some dirty little incest secrets. So Brother's Keeper works as a cultural document. The dynamics of the whole city mice vs. the country mice thing added another layer, and the courtroom scenes were riveting. The documentarians treat the subject matter both objectively and lovingly. You can tell Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky spent a great deal of time with the brothers, and you get such an intimate portrait of them. We don't get all the answers because they don't really matter all that much. Brother's Keeper sets up more questions than it answers, but that's part of the beauty of it. I also really liked how this showed the media's despicably voyeuristic role in a case like this, the almost gleeful talking heads that flocked to Middle-of-Nowhere, New York, to report on the story. In the end, I felt almost happy that these filmmakers helped me see the humanity in this mystery, made me seem like a much better person than the slimy news reporters and the big city big-wigs. I ended up liking simple-minded Delbert quite a bit, and after the filmmakers contrast scenes with him admiring his chickens that he keeps in a run-down school bus converted into a coop with a brutally and graphically violent scene featuring a random guy slaughtering a pig, you just get the feeling that there's no way Delbert could have done anything cold blooded. Or maybe he could. Who knows? Euthanasia or death by natural causes? Perhaps it's the little liberal in me trying to get out, but I don't think it even matters.

Exit through the Gift Shop

2010 documentary

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A used clothing store owner with a habit of filming every moment of his life gets involved with some graffiti artists in L.A. He films them while letting them think he's going to make a documentary that he never intends to make. But he really wants to meet the enigmatic street art star Banksy. They finally meet, and Guetta gets a rare opportunity to follow around the secretive artist. He does make the documentary, but it's so bizarrely terrible, that Banksy decides to redo it all himself, sending Guetta back to the States to start his own art career.

What starts out as a pretty intimate look at an art form that I didn't realize was a legitimate art form mixed with a biographical glimpse at a wacky French vintage clothing store owner and amateur winds up being a very entertaining assault on some of the hypocrisies and absurdities of the art world. And that little twist, pretty much where the focus changes from graffiti art to Thierry's own stab at making it as an artist, is refreshingly entertaining and very revealing. Don't get me wrong--I enjoyed the stuff about the artists, too, and a lot of the shots of them at work are really fascinating. The footage during the opening credits is really cool, showing what these guys have to go through for their craft including a Jackie Chan-esque escape from the po-po. The art itself is awesome, too. Then, the mysterious Banksy shows up, and with his painted elephants and his particular brand of renegade art, and this thing grows new skin. Initially, I thought I'd be annoyed by Banksy, probably because I thought he'd remind me of my middle school students. But his creativity and sense of humor quickly won me over, and how can you not respect a guy who manages to make Disneyland seem like a menacing place. I thought it was funny when the narrator kept alluding to a Disneyland interrogation room while showing shots of the "It's a Small World" ride. I also thought it was hilarious when, following Banksy's look at Theirry's insane attempt at documentary filmmaking (the results which were almost too insane to be true), the artist said, "Umm. It's when I realized that maybe Thierry wasn't a filmmaker and was maybe just a guy with mental problems who happened to have a camera." And then you get Thierry's overnight transmogrification into a pop artist. One wonders where the hell he got the money to become Mr. Brainwash ("Everything that I do. . .somewhere. . .brainwash your face.") but things sure wackify once that happens. Whether a meticulously planned and elaborate hoax or a legitimate documentary doesn't matter. This gets its points across so cleverly and in such an entertaining way that you won't even mind it's getting a point across. Very intriguing stuff.

Damned--The Strange World of Jose Mojica Marins

"I'm Coffin Joe, and I'm about to eat your amygdala!"

2001 documentary

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Director and actor Marins discusses the ups and downs of his life and career.

This opens with some amazing footage of what I guess was a mass hypnosis. It looks like something straight out of a documentary about a Pentecostal church though. Coffin Joe tells a congregation that they are on a plane, a plane which begins to shake and eventually go down. The people scream and weep uncontrollably. Then, Joe tells them that they're all going to hell and grins madly and deviously. I'm not sure what exactly it adds to the Jose Mojica Marins story, but it sure was interesting to watch. Flash-forward to '99, and Coffin Joe's let himself go a bit. He looks like an ordinary out-of-shape Brazilian guy, balding and pot-bellied, and I'm not sure if I was surprised or disappointed that he isn't completely insane. I did learn some interesting tidbits about the guy:

1) He was born, of course, on Friday the 13th.

2) He loved and was inspired by comics, but surprisingly, to me at least, not Batman. He didn't care for Robin apparently.

3) As a boy, he actually lived in a movie theater.

4) His "studio" was an old chicken barn.

5) The first shocking film that he saw was an educational film about venereal disease.

6) He had a bodyguard named Satan.

7) As a kid, he knew a guy who sold potatoes on the street. He and the other children loved the guy. But as all potato men must eventually do, he passed away. Then, at his funeral, he came back to life again and freaked everybody out. This would have an impact on young Marins' life.

8) When working, Marins rarely slept or ate, sometimes working for 96 straight hours without stopping. He had to be hospitalized after taking 20 amphetamine pills.

9) While filming a movie called God's Sentence, he decided he was cursed due to all kinds of problems. Two actresses died, another actress lost a leg, the producer died. An assistant camera man asked Marins, "Who's next?" Marins answered, "You are." Of course, four hours later, the assistant camera man died.

10) Marins used snakes, spiders, and vivisepulture to test his actors and make sure they had the courage to appear in his movies.

11) The banning of Awakening of the Beast (this one will be on my blog soon enough) ruined him. He funded his next movies with the earnings from the previous movie. Since Awakening of the Beast wasn't allowed to be released, no next movie. Marins had to turn to an Ed Woodish pornography career.

12) Unlike Ed Wood's work, Marins' often involved bestiality. At least one had a talking dog, played by a non-talking dog that Marins said was the best actor he worked with.

For those of you who are bored with my write-ups of Coffin Joe movies, be glad to know that I've only got one to go. For the rest of you, here's a picture of Marins at work:

Audience of One

2007 documentary that my brother will be pissed I watched without him so I'd better hurry up and type a bunch of entries with the hope that he won't see this

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Because Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat wasn't quite amazing enough, God speaks to Richard, a Pentecostal preacher from California, and tells him he needs to make a science fiction movie based on Joseph's story. His congregation helps fund the project while Richard works hard to find other investors to help raise the fifty million dollars the first-time director wants to work with. Unfortunately, God doesn't seem to like what happens in pre-production and decides not to support the project any more. But Richard and his congregation, still convinced that they've been called to make the film, keep trying to do everything they can to make Gravity: The Shadow of Joseph a reality.

On the one hand, you almost want to commend Richard for his faith and for his creative spirit. He's a man, for better or for worse, who is bursting with ideas. But that one hand is so far away from the other hand, a much larger and more conspicuous and screaming hand. And on that hand, you want this guy to be punished for biting off far more than he can chew, ripping off a flock that really doesn't look like it can afford to be ripped off, and for being about as delusional as an individual can be. Don't get me wrong--I have nothing against delusions. But Richard's delusions are potentially harmful, the best example in this film probably being where one of his crew asks if it's safe for kids to be around some horses and getting the answer "Don't worry about that." There's a wonderful moment in the movie when, after spending a nice wad of movie to film in a neat spot in Italy, they encounter problem after problem. One of the problems is that their camera stops working. Oh, snap, right? Not if you're Richard who announced, "God called us here to shoot this movie, and we're going to shoot this movie--camera or no camera." It's not a leap of faith as much as it's a triple-jump of faith or a pole vault of faith. Later, after the church rents a San Francisco movie studio that they eventually can't afford the rent on after shooting what seemed to be zero hours of footage, Richard starts to get really paranoid, even setting up security so that nobody will bust in and steal their ideas. "It's either God or I'm crazy," he claims at one point, and you'll come away from this believing it's definitely one of those. By the end of the movie, Richard's completely lost his mind, promising his congregation that God has sent him a vision in which they'll be making forty-seven films a year, own eight TV networks, have their own airport, and (believe it or not) colonize another planet. Got news for you, Richard. It ain't God. Since this is a documentary about Pentecostals, you know you're going to be treated or creeped out by some scenes showcasing their religious practices, and there's a nifty scene where they're sanctifying the studio, a process that involves a great deal of shouting and these really strange horns. A lot of the cast is entertaining. The guy who plays the "horned captain" (I went to a Bible college, but I don't remember a "horned captain" in the Joseph story.), actor Daniel who plays Spirf, and a tubby and high-maintenance trippin' stunt man could all be in any movie that God tells me to make.

Don't tell Anonymous that I watched this.

Microcosmos

1996 bug movie

Rating: 17/20 (Jen: 18/20)

Plot: Gnomes, I imagine, use very tiny cameras to record the goings-on of strange and colorful insects, some which I suspect don't really exist.

Has that perverse part of you that you don't want anybody to know about ever wanted to voyeuristically watch a couple snails knockin' coiled shells? Then, stop reading this and grab yourself a copy of Microcosmos immediately. This bug movie doesn't have the narrative structure of the recommended The Besieged Fortress, but it's got a lot more insect variety. It's the sort of thing where you think (a lot), "No, that bug doesn't actually exist. That's computer-animated!" and (a lot more), "What the hell are those bugs even doing?" Bugs are wacky, and this intimate glimpse into their world is an experience and a half. The images dropped my jaw, and several times, insects made it into my mouth while I watched Microcosmos. I suspect it's all part of a tiny conspiracy. It's fantastic stuff, and my only gripe was a theme song (lyrics below) which sounded like it was being sung by a dead child. It was in there three times, and although by the closing credits, I was singing along in a joking way, I was creeped out and couldn't sleep afterward. Hours later, it still reverberated in my noggin, and I had become convinced that I had become possessed by the "The Microcosmos Song" and had to find an exorcist in the yellow pages. That ended up being costly. Terrific movie though, so I guess it was worth it.

"Look at your feet
This funny world
Full of insane small creatures

And listen to
This buzzing chord
Who keenly spreads such keen murmurs.

The sound's buzzing, swarming,
Sliding beetles, snails, and ladybirds

On swarming grubs
On sliding ants.
Open your eyes before you die.

Sit on the grass,
Observe and paint
The toad, the wasp, the dragonfly.

The sound's buzzing, swarming,
Sliding beetles, snails, and ladybirds

On swarming grubs
On sliding ants.
Open your eyes before you die."

Louisiana Story

1948 fake documentary

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A boy and his pet raccoon ward off alligators on an otherwise idyllic Louisiana bayou. Things change when an oil company rolls in and sets up its equipment.

Note: There were better poster choices than the one I picked. That makes Louisiana Story look like it could be a love story between a boy and his raccoon, and I don't want you to get the wrong idea. It's not.

A thrill-packed, fun-packed masterpiece from Nanook of the North director Robert Flaherty, a guy who, rather than document reality, manufactured his own artificial realities. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but this one is a real mix of positives and negatives. On the one hand, the narrative part of this narrative documentary is intriguing, and just like in Nanook, Flaherty's filmed in a location that 1940s audiences would find oddly exotic. The black and white bayou is shot beautifully, and I really liked watching the innards of the oil derrick. I also enjoyed watching the peaceful picturesque existence of The Boy (played by Joseph Boudreaux but apparently Alexander Napolean Ulysses Latour in the film) as he sloshed along fishing and talking with his pet raccoon. Boudreaux, like the rest of the ragin' Cajuns in the movie, is a non-actor. Although that lends a bit of authenticity to the proceedings, it also is one of the main problems with the movie. Whenever the characters interact with each other, it seems so staged and unnatural and kind of annoying. This would have been a lot more effective as a silent film. I imagine that Nanook would been pretty goofy if he was filmed in an era where we could hear him talk, too. The part of the movie that makes it "thrill-packed" enough to let them use those words for the poster above involves a heart-stopping battle with an alligator. Or crocodile. Whatever lives down there. Flaherty uses some exciting movie music and alternating shots of the menacing alligator and the boy swinging a stick. The scene goes on and on, and it's pretty silly, even for the 1940s. Speaking of the exciting movie music, composer Virgil Thomson actually won a Pulitzer Prize for the work. I'm not Joseph Pulitzer (or Crocodile Pulitzer or whoever that award is named after), but I actually hated the music. It was just too much, clashing with the simple scenes of the boy in his boat. I would have preferred some simple Cajun music. Or even some complicated Cajun music. Or some crocodile music, simple or complicated.

49 Up

2005 installment of a documentary series

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Filmmaker Michael Apted films and interviews a couple handfuls of seven-year olds. Then, every seven years, he finds them and checks in with how they're doing. In this installment, they're forty-nine and, for the most part, pretty boring.

My main problem with this is that I don't really like human beings all that much. This is definitely a case where I like the idea of a movie better than the actual movie. Filming people every seven years? That sounds like a fantastic idea. I can see that being a profound and maybe even humorous experience, glimpses at the human spirit, microcosms of humanity that we can watch and learn more about ourselves. Unfortunately for Michael Apted (and me, I guess), these people are really boring. It's probably because they're English. Out of the ten or so folks who were interviewed for this series, there was really only one guy I enjoyed learning about or wanted to find out more about, a guy who at thirty-five was homeless. He was interesting. I can't really imagine anybody wanting to spend time with any of these other people. For somebody who hasn't seen 7 Up through 42 Up, these biographies were a little on the sketchy side, too. I was most amused when the subjects seemed angry at Apted and lashed out at him. Perhaps they were having difficulty figuring out the point of all this just like me. This has more depth than a reality television series, but it's got that same kind of voyeuristic feel that modern television audiences seem to like. Only there's not a Kardashian sister in it. There's something fascinating about watching people age, and I think I would have liked this a lot more if I had followed the series from the beginning. And maybe if this particular collection of people weren't so dull.

Capitalism: A Love Story

2009 left-wing propaganda

Rating: 16/20 (Jen: 14/20)

Plot: Some tubby guy whines about how capitalism only works for people willing to take advantage of the system in evil ways at the expense of the people it won't work for.

I wept seven different times last week for a variety of reasons, and one of those times was during this movie.
Michael Moore manipulates, delivering his messages in cutesy ways and more often than not coming across like a snarky panda. That's what he is actually. He's Propaganda Panda, unprofessional even because he wears that baseball cap. But here, he's nothing but right, and this documentary is an often surprisingly moving experience. Capitalism has the devastation, hope, and humor present in Moore's best work. And there sure is a lot of information packed into this, enough that I could see somebody arguing that it's all unfocused and sloppy. But with the exception of some interviews with priests and some silly shots of cats flushing toilets, all of these parts are important in building the whole, and that whole is something that every American should probably see. And not just the filthy liberals who voted that socialist we've currently got in the White House either as Moore has made a movie for the demos in our democracy. Even if viewers aren't moved to do anything, they're getting a good story. There's good vs. evil and tons of plot twists. There's even a hint of a terrifying unhappy ending at the beginning of Moore's film when he juxtaposes shots from modern times with what looks to be a film strip about the fall of Rome. Solid stuff. Thanks, Propaganda Panda!

I tried to get Jen to write a guest review, and she refused. She did criticize Moore for wasting film time with gimmicks. She wanted more substance and less Propaganda Panda, I guess.

Babies

2010 documentary

Rating: 11/20 (Jen: 20/20; Dylan: 4/20; Emma: 18/20; Abbey: 20/20)

Plot: A seemingly endless juxtaposition of home video footage of babies from Nambia, Japan, Mongolia, and America during the first year of their lives.

A baby who isn't yours is nothing more than an obnoxious flabby burdensome stupid thing who, according to my father, looks like a shrunken Winston Churchill. And to be completely honest, I'm not sure I would want to watch ninety minutes of home videos featuring my own children as babies, let alone these babies I've got no connection with at all. Purportedly, this is all about how different cultures raise their children, but there's very little focus, just pointless and annoyingly precious scenes strung together haphazardly and given a title that a baby might have been able to come up with. And despite the cultural differences, some subtle and some extreme, we all know that it's all going to end the same with the annoying babies eventually becoming dangerous adults. So even though it's all shot very well, it's really as pointless and trite as documentary filmmaking gets. I would rather change a crappy diaper than watch this one again, but it's the exact sort of thing that some people would find delightful. For whatever reason, I want to blame Oprah for this.